


Sleepless Sealth

by wrexie



Category: Be Calm
Genre: M/M, Vampirism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-21
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:25:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrexie/pseuds/wrexie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a serial killer on the loose in Seattle, taking victims in a way so reminiscent of a vampire that it feeds the public's fascination and leaves doctors baffled. But when the killer turns out to be not quite what anyone would expect, Dr. Fritz E. Eberhart is caught in the middle of ancient family affairs and thrown into a world he did not expect to exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepless Sealth

 

                Doctor Fritz E. Eberhart, twenty-six years old, was a University of Washington graduate with all of the marks. Or at least as many marks as he could manage to obtain. His friends in college used to joke around about how he never seemed to go on any dates or to any parties, but the joke was on them when he had the pick of the lot to continue his studies as a surgical student. He could afford to live comfortably, even with the vast amount of student loans looming over him. He wasn’t even sure how many wound up dropping out of medical school in the end. Sometimes he wondered what they were up to, if they would ever fulfill their dreams of buying large houses and spending weekends on a yacht. He suspected most of them weren’t living it already, like he was.

                Briskly walking down the hall with a clipboard in hand and a big, goofy smile on his face, he was living the life. The one he’d set his heart on when he was fifteen. The one where he could smile and wave at Mrs.Clemly as he passed her by, whether it be on his way to the grocery store or on his way to surgery as she patiently waited to have her hip replacement. He’d taken extra care to make sure she was comfortable tonight. Her surgery wasn’t until the next morning, and nothing said “I love my landlady” more than a selection of her favorite movies and a pair of noise-blocking headphones.

                He would have spent the whole evening chatting with her instead, but other people were important too. Namely his patients—though technically they weren’t _his_ patients. Still a few more years before he could say that.

                Brushing open the curtain, he poked his big nose through the curtain and toned the grin down a bit, pulling up a stool to the chair inside.

                “Well hello Lucy, how are you doing tonight?”

                “Good.”

                “Good! Are you excited for your first surgery?”

                “… Sure,” Lucy replied, a smile cracking her face as he and her mother laughed.

                “Well, you’re very brave! And who’s this?” he asked, pointing at the grimy stuffed dog in the girl’s arms. She held it closer, grinning as she said, “Cinnamon.”

                “Well it’s very nice to meet the both of you. I’m Dr.Eberhart, and I’ll be helping out Dr.Woodruff today. Do you remember what we’re doing?” He rolled back on his stool to pop out a thermometer and stick it under Lucy’s tongue, her mouth agape as she thought. “You’re… You’re gonna take out my atoloids.” “Adenoids, dear.” “Adenoids. You’re gonna take out my adenoids so I can breathe better.”

                “Very good! Wow, you’re very smart to remember all that,” Fritz commented, half-distracted as he slipped the thermometer out of her mouth and began to write on his clipboard, looking incredibly undoctorish in his green scrubs all covered in yellow bananas. Truth be told, one of the nurses should have been taking her vitals before the surgery.  But they were short on nurses, and he didn’t have much to do while Lydia got her stuff ready. “Do you know where your adenoids are?”

                Lucy opened her mouth as wide as she could, a small finger diving in behind her gap-teeth to point at the back of her throat. “Behin’ these thingsth!” she exclaimed, grinning and bouncing around in her chair. Fritz smiled, crossing his legs as he finished writing on his clipboard. “And do you know what those are called?” “Tonsthilsth.” “Good job! We’ll make a doctor out of you yet,” he joked, sending Lucy to hide bashfully behind Cinnamon. “You know, I was about your age when I had my tonsils taken out.”

                Cinnamon was dropped into her lap as she looked at Dr.Eberhart with wide eyes, as if a timeless being like a doctor could have ever been her age. “Really?”

                “Really.”

                “… Coooool.”

                He laughed again before steeling himself, taking a glance at both Lucy and her mother, patiently knitting in the corner of the room. “Now Lucy, we’re going to begin in a few minutes. A nurse is going to come in through that curtain with a bed, and we’re going to put you on it while we take you to the surgery room.”

                “Can Cinnamon come with me?” she asked, looking a bit like a rabbit as she sat trembling in the chair. But the way Fritz looked at her warmly and replied, “Of course, sweetie,” cast all of her worries away. Within moments she was back to being sort-of-excited about her first surgery.

                “Well, then another doctor will put you two to sleep with a mask that will make you very sleepy. So while we’re in there, you have to listen very closely to her directions, alright?”

                An enthusiastic nod.

                “While you’re asleep, we’ll take the adenoids out. And then, before you know it, you’ll be right back here with your mommy!” he cheered, just as the nurse came in with the gurney. “Ah, and here we go! Are you ready, Lucy?”

                She nodded, brightening up. “Yeah.”

                “Ah—and one more thing,” he said, stopping himself as he went to pick her up. “At the end you might feel just a bit nauseous. So go ahead and ask a nurse to show you where the bathroom is, alright?”

 

 

                The surgery room was a bright white, smiling eyes behind white masks looking down on her as she stared at the puffy blue and green hats on their heads. They looked like mushrooms.

                “Hello, Lucy,” one of them greeted, a girl with dark hair and glasses. “I’m Lydia. I’m your anesthesiologist—the one who’s going to put you and your puppy-dog to sleep!”

                She nodded timidly, cowering away from Lydia until a person in green pushed through. He pulled his mask down to reveal a smirk and his big, hooked nose, and she immediately felt better. Even giggled as he gave her a wink. Lydia, however, rolled her eyes. The same light blue eyes as Dr.Eberhart’s, but… colder, somehow. “Alright, I’m going to put this mask on you, and this mask on your puppy-dog there. Then I want you to count to twenty. Can you count to twenty?”

                “Yeah,” replied Lucy, and without much more notice Lydia strapped the mask to her face and listened as she began counting. “One, two, three, four, six, four, five, sev, eight, nine, ven… twove… th…”

                The room burst into life as directions were given and the mask was removed.  Dr.Eberhart made way for Dr.Woodruff, turning into the doctor he was trained to be as he watched the older man work on the girl. He could remember a time when watching this work would have sent him to the toilet like a rollercoaster ride, but now he watched with a practiced gaze. It was nothing life-threatening. Two years and he was still helping out on stress-free surgeries, thoroughly examining and practicing before moving on to larger endeavors.  Not that today’s surgery was a challenge. Should take half an hour at the most. It was like a little day-time special in the world of surgery.

                A lump of red was discarded onto a tray, and the tools were handed to him. “The other side, now,” Dr.Woodruff said, hovering over Red’s shoulder as he began his work. “Good. Great work. Use the other surgeons as well, doctor. You’re in charge here now, not me. “

                Nodding, Dr.Eberhart looked over at the timid nurse in the corner. “Too much blood is going down her throat, I need you to swab.”

                Not a moment later, there was swabbing. And within a few more minutes, a second lump of red was taken out and placed on a tray to be discarded. Not nearly as fast or as clean as Dr.Woodruff, but he felt a congratulatory pat on his shoulder anyway. The older doctor excused himself, clearing up the room a little as they prepared little Lucy to go back to her mother. Thank goodness mouth wounds healed quickly, the room buzzing again to get her out as it stopped.

                “Mmm… h’vya star...d yet?” came a small voice from the gurney. Lydia almost jumped out of her skin in shock, staring at the surgery-dazed girl. But Fritz laughed, wiping Lucy’s hair from her forehead. “Shh, we’re almost done. Go back to sleep,” he soothed, surprising most everyone at the gurney as she obediently closed her eyes again. She didn’t even fuss as they moved her back to the chair, her mother already speaking with Dr.Woodruff.

                By the time her eyes fluttered back open, Lydia and the nurses were long gone.

                “Good morning,” he greeted, Lucy smiling and waving at him. Still a bit groggy from the anesthesia, then.  “Are you nauseous?” She shook her head. “You swallowed a lot of blood, so you might throw it back up. Don’t be afraid to ask us to take you to the bathroom, okay?”

                Lucy nodded, as if in thought for a moment. “… I need to pee,” she finally said.

                Hand-in-hand, he led her to the small bathroom on the corner, and point out the chain beside the toilet. “Pull that if you need any help, okay?” “Okay.” She shut the door behind her, not even bothering to turn on the light first. He chuckled as he waited outside of it, watching Dr.Woodruff and her mother converse in pantomime. Only now did he notice how tired he was, his eyelids drooping. The hospital’s fluorescent lights could always rob you of your sense of time. Day and night, it was a center of activity, whether relaxed and office-like or hectic like a madhouse. But it seemed oddly… empty on the third floor tonight. As if fewer people were working this shift.

                He was startled by the sharp buzz of the help lever, Dr.Woodruff and Lucy’s mom rushing down to the corner to see exactly what had gone wrong. Then, bursting open the door, he almost laughed. There Lucy was, sitting on the floor, hunched over the toilet bowl and using the chain to balance herself, moaning about how sick she felt.

                Returning to the chair, he wrote a quick note good-bye and left it tucked under Cinnamon’s mask, a memory of her first surgery.

 

 

                “Is it just me, or does it feel like everyone’s… missing?” Fritz asked the locker room, pulling on his shirt and tossing his towel into the laundry bin. Unfortunately, the locker room turned out to be just Lydia, still sour over her blunder with Lucy’s anesthesia. “Mmhm, just you. They were all down in the ICU. They had another one of those victims come in,” she said, puckering her lips to apply some more lipstick.

“One of the ones from that serial killer? The vampire one?”

“Yeah. Bite marks and eeeeverything.”

Fritz smiled. “So I take it you don’t actually believe it’s a vampire?”

“How could I? The entire thing seems so… so gimmicky!” she snapped, shoving her pocket mirror into her purse. “It’s probably some Twilight-obsessed teen going around and murdering people for kicks. And they’re making my life hell for it. They keep dragging me into these meetings and dumping all of this extra work on me because ‘you’re an anesthesiologist, you’ll know what this is, right?’ Haven’t had a decent night of sleep in days.”

“But then why leave the last four victims alive? If it was a killer, I’d think they would be much more thoro--”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” Ah. He wouldn’t be getting any farther after that.

Fritz ran his fingers through his hair, yawning as he stretched out his arms and leaned on the locker opposite of her.  Dressed to the nines, even after work. Heels and everything. He wondered how she could stand dressing like that after a long day, how she couldn’t just want to hop into pajamas like he did and lounge around the house doing nothing.

“… You going out somewhere?” he asked, earning him nothing but a scowl in return. “I’ve got a date tonight, thank you. Perhaps you should look into getting one yourself, stop nosing about other people’s business.” “I was only being polite—I thought you were tired? It’s midnight, you shouldn’t be going on a date, you should be heading home and going to sleep.”

She made a face at him, flicking out her cell-phone. “Don’t tell me what to do, doctor,” she said, almost like a threat as she walked past him. “And stop nosing about other people’s business with that big bird-beak of yours.”

The clicks of her heels faded away as he pulled on his jacket, only to be replaced by Woodruff’s gruff chuckle. “She’s a darlin’, ain’t she? Got the whole department talkin’ about her behind her back,” he commented, clapping a big hand heavily on Fritz’s shoulder. For someone so stout he was unnervingly… stealthy. Not that he seemed to notice, slipping out the door before Fritz could notice like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Drive safe Fritz, it’s raining somethin’ awful out there tonight.”

 

 

Something awful was the understatement of the century. Fritz was lucky if he could see twenty feet ahead of him clearly. And trust Washington drivers to know how to drive in the rain! You’d think that for how often it rained they would know, but no. Not at all. He actually sort of felt sorry for the people working in the ER that night.

A few red lights and angry, silent glares at incompetent drivers, and he broke free of the congestion at last. He sped up just a little, eager to get home. No one out and about, really. Typical residential area. No harm done. It was actually sort of calming after a while, driving like that. When his cellphone rung, he was almost tempted to just leave it. Let the annoying bagpipes he’d set for that person play out because he just didn’t want to deal with his shit. But then, what sort of friend would he be?

Grudgingly, he picked the phone up and felt his car rock around on the axels as it ran into something. He slammed on the brakes and his eyes shot up, barely seeing a boy roll off the side of his hood. “… Sshhhhit,” he hissed, wide eyed as he held the phone away from him, angry ranting on the other side far surpassing the volume of the phone anyway. “Hold on, I’ll call you back, something came up,” he told the voice, hanging up on its confused tirade and dialing 9-1-1 instead. But he was still a doctor. He couldn’t just sit by. He had hit someone with his car and he could be the difference between him living and dying. Granted that he wasn’t already dead.

The thought spurred him to check, grabbing his flashlight as the dialtone kept ringing, cursing the rain for holding up the lines. He knelt beside the boy, pushing away his ratty scarf and pressing his hand against his neck. Fritz sighed in relief. He still had a pulse at least, even if it was a bit erratic. “Hello? Hello, can you hear me? Please, if you can, I need you to say something,” he said, his voice calm and assertive. “Anything at all.”

A few moments and the boy was still silent. It worried Fritz, and even more as the dial tone continued to ring. He could have a concussion. A brain bleed. God, his arm was looking awfully mangled too. A complex break like that didn’t look like it could have come from hitting his car. Fritz’ brow furrowed as he continued to inspect the unconscious boy.

By his height and weight, he felt sixteen, maybe seventeen. His clothes were threadbare and soaked to the bone, smeared with mud and pine straws like he’d been camping out beneath a tree. Probably homeless, it wasn’t uncommon. A bit of a shame, Fritz thought. People so young living like that. He let his hand brush the boy’s dirty hair out of his face and into the hood of his coat, and frowned. Even if he took him to the ER himself and skipped the ambulance ride, he probably wasn’t insured and would get landed with a heavy bill…

“Hello, Seattle Emergency Services, what seems to be the problem?”

“I…” he choked. “N-nothing. I apologize.”

He hung up, pocketed the phone, and left the operator in certain confusion, staring down at the young boy with a heavy heart. He had to do something, had to fix this somehow. Make things better in a way the system he was caught up in couldn’t with all of its numbers and statistics. He looked left, then right, making sure the road was still deserted. Within moments he was beginning to regret the decision, but he lifted the boy up and loaded him into the passenger seat anyway, making sure the seatbelt was secure before climbing back into the driver’s side.

Kid was damn lucky he got hit by a doctor.

**Author's Note:**

> I more often than not loathe when people mention that this is their first fanfic like it's a crutch, but I feel a duty to inform you that this is my first attempt at a public, chaptered story. It's going to be quite the adventure, and I hope you will be able to bear with me as I figure out how to do this.
> 
> A million thanks to Marn for being my beta! What a sweetheart I mean seriously
> 
> betaing fanfiction of her own story
> 
> how cool is she
> 
> (also if anyone could inform me how to make those lines in HTML that'd be great because I can't seem to figure it out)


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